Sunday Nov 21, 2010

I picked up a request on Twitter, asking for help in explaining the concept of "string concatenation" to a nontechnical audience. I struggled for a bit, and then remembered the excellent Facebook internationalization (I18n) materials. I sent them on, and was thanked. Job done.
Here's how Facebook dealt with the issue:

(Image copyright Facebook, 2010)

Notice how the word "concatenation" never appears at all? That's smart. The audience for the materials is not made up of seasoned developers or professional linguists. Why bring such a technical term into the conversation when it can be explained in simple terms--with examples too?